


Unintentional Love Stories

by nahco3



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>old-school Valenica fic - it's 2006, and David Villa doesn't want to be Raul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unintentional Love Stories

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during the 2006-2007 season, which is the first year Villa and Silva played together, and is the year Mori came to Valencia. All football-y details (not that there are many) are accurate to the best of my ability.
> 
> originally posted to my lj.

Looking back, David realizes he was never suited for childhood. He was shadow-small, fast but quick to tire, bubbling with anger he didn’t bother to contain. He was always bruised, from football and from the fights he’d get into after school. His eyes gleamed like he was destined for better things and he taunted the older boys like he taunted defenders – beautifully overconfident.

He came home one day when he was fifteen, beginnings of a black eye and a split lip. His mother fussed over him and he told her not to worry.

“Oh David,” she said, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She wasn’t much shorter than him, but he could see the lines around her eyes and the grey in her black hair.

He was watching football in the dark when his dad came home from the mines. He heard his parents talking quietly in the kitchen, and then his dad came in and shut off the tv.

“This has to stop, David,” his father said.

David looked up at him, surly. “They started it.”

David’s father walked over to the couch and grabbed David by the bicep, grip tight enough to bruise. “Stop,” he told David, voice dangerously low. He shook David once and left the room.

David stopped looking for fights, and when they found him, he stopped coming home. He got a reputation for being a quiet guy, a hard worker, someone who always guessed right. He played first team football. He got married.

That was how he lived out his unsatisfactory childhood, his angry adolescence, his overconfident adulthood.

The World Cup ends – gone from golden to shit faster than David can understand. The season starts and David’s muscles ache maybe a little more than they should, but David doesn’t care. He has something else on his mind: Fernando Morientes’ mercurial smile, the first time they meet at training.

“Call me Mori,” he says, grinning. “All my strike partners do.”

His skin is warm. They go out for drinks, and Mori tells bad jokes. David laughs despite himself, unwillingly charmed. They leave the bar late and walk along the beach. David wants a football, wants the waves to be the touchline, wants to show Mori what he can do.

The end up sitting on the sand.

“Did you miss Spain?” David asks.

Mori laughs, which David is starting to understand is his default reaction. “Yeah.” He’s looking out to sea. David waits, and Mori turns to him. “You know, you remind me of someone.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

David snorts. “Yourself?”

Mori laughs again. “No, thank god.”

David looks for constellations and considers his options. “Raul?”

No laughter this time, which David takes as confirmation. “You’re wrong,” he says flatly. “I’m nothing like him.”

Mori’s teeth flash white. “You are.” He meets David’s eyes, every inch a challenge. David kisses him.

He and Mori room together, management more than happy to encourage whatever connection is creating the goals. David isn’t reckless enough to fuck before games, but afterward, adrenaline pushing them both forward, he holds Mori down and leaves bruises like good luck charms.

One day Mori calls him after practice and he drives to Mori’s house, overlooking the sea. His wife and kids are out. The windows are open, sunlight streaming in, and Mori laughs breathlessly into David’s ear. David wonders how much longer they’re going to be able to do this.

Because he isn’t Raul, can’t be, won’t be, and David’s never been a very good substitute either. He’d rather start his own games, and finish them.

David Albelda comes up to him one day after practice, a few monthes into the season.

“Villa, you talked to Silva yet?”

David shrugs, annoyed with this sudden display of captaincy. “Some.”

“Telling him where you want his crosses doesn’t count. He could use a…” Albelda trails off, gestures unhelpfully.

David raises his eyebrows, too tired to be really annoyed. “I’ll talk to him,” he says, pulling off his cleats.

“Cool,” Albelda says, and wanders off. David rolls his eyes.

Next away match, he’s rooming with the kid. Mori shrugs at David, apparently unbothered, which bothers David. He’s not superstitious, but it helps him to know Mori’ll be there after the game, to hold him in place and say his name like it means something.

“Maybe he’ll be out after the game,” David tells Mori in the elevator. Mori stretches and smiles. “Don’t count on it,” he says. “Whatever, we can use the rest.” The amusement in his eyes doesn’t hide the calculation there.

After the game – David played like shit and he’s angry, because he shouldn’t need Mori to perform. The kid isn’t in the room, so David calls up Mori.

He comes. David locks the door behind him. Mori comes up behind him, fitting his arms around David’s waist, kissing the back of his neck.

“Could have been worse,” Mori tells him, smiling into David’s skin. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

David turns and drops to his knees. “Don’t worry, I’m not,” he says, looking up and Mori’s eyes, undoing his fly.

Mori leaves afterward, and David doesn’t care. He feels hollowed out, tired, but indifferent. He’s not Raul, he’s not going to let himself be caught like this.

Silva comes in kind of late, quietly. David’s still awake, looking at the ceiling.

“Hey,” Silva says, almost too soft for David to hear. David nods his acknowledgment without turning to face him.

The only other thing Silva says to him that night is “mind if I turn the light off?” and no, David doesn’t.

Maybe it’s because of what Albelda says, maybe because he’s rooming with the kid pretty often now, but David starts watching him more closely.

Silva’s unmarked in a way David’s pretty sure he’s never been. Back from loan, playing his first season for Valencia. The kid has a reputation for being quiet, can play with both his feet, so people assume he’s like David. David isn’t so sure.

They don’t talk much when they room together, and when they do it’s never about football. Silva likes the sea, was born on an island.

“I don’t like being inland,” he tells David when they’re in Madrid one night. “The sky’s too small.”

David doesn’t really like the sea, stretching too far and he can’t see the edges. He finds himself telling Silva about going down into the mines with his dad.

Winter’s creeping in and Silva starts saving him a seat on the bus, next to the window, so he can look out at the highway and see the green of the pitch. Silva’s a buffer next to him, listening to music quietly, keeping Joaquin from talking to David. Sometimes, after bad matches David brushes his knee against Silva’s, a flare of heat to remind him there’s something other than football. Silva meets his eyes, looks a little scared, but also confident.

They lose to Chelsea at home in April – out of Europe just like that, and David blames himself and everyone else pretty much equally. Silva’s waiting for him outside.

“Drive me home?” he asks, another routine they’ve fallen into without David knowing how. David nods, not trusting himself to speak.

He grips the wheel tightly, takes the curves faster that he should. He knows Silva’s watching him, hates that the kid’s seeing him like this, barely controlled.

He pulls up at Silva’s house. “It wasn’t your fault,” David tells him.

“It wasn’t yours either,” Silva says, unbuckles his seat belt and kisses David on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.” Then he’s gone.

David bangs his head into the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters. He wants to throw up.

Silva smiles at him the next morning, beautifully hopeful, but David keeps his face blank. Silva’s expression falls and David’s chest aches. Better this way, he says to himself, and turns to Mori’s insincere smile as some sort of reminder.

Silva waits for him after practice anyway. “David,” he calls, not letting David just walk away the way he should.

“What?” They’re in the parking lot, it’s mostly empty but David’s palms itch with the need to leave, go somewhere quieter, somewhere farther from the kid.

“About last night…I’m sorry,” Silva hangs his head, his hair falling over his face in a way that makes David ache to touch it.

“Don’t be,” David tells him, not enough cruelty to do this right. And Silva looks up, too fucking hopeful, everything he wants from David written across his face.

“I…” David says, because he doesn’t have any other way to respond, any way other than kissing Silva in the parking lot, in front of half a dozen disinterested fans.

Silva smiles a little. “Drive me home?”

They fall into it too quickly for it to be safe. David forgets to breath when they wake up tangled together after away games. They don’t need words - somehow Silva knows what David means just from the set of his shoulders, the quirk of his mouth. David thinks he can read his future from Silva’s palm, traces the lines with his finger some nights. He forgets how dangerous this is.


End file.
